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UAE Before S**t Went Down PTR - Part 4: Motiongate, Real Madrid & Storm Coaster

Gavin

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This report is from around a month ago. I’m halfway through a masters degree and they’re expecting me to read, and write essays and s**t, so my quiet times at work have been spent on that. The original plan for this trip was Riyadh for Six Flags Qiddiya, after a stopover in Doha, but the 3 days I had available to hit the park ended up being the exact three days that the park decided (at a stupidly late point) to not be open. Luckily, I was prepared for shenanigans and had booked everything to be easily changeable/refundable, so I pushed the whole thing back to the first week of my Easter Holiday, which starts next Friday. Yeah.

Anyway, I was left with pretty much no time to plan a different trip, but realised that there was quite a bit of new stuff in the UAE since my last visit 8 years prior, and found a surprisingly cheap flight to Abu Dhabi considering it was Chinese New Year. Last time, I’d stayed in the city centre and headed out to Ferrari World for the day, but there are two new parks since then, and I’d “done” Abu Dhabi the last time, so I just stayed on YAAAAAAAAAS Island, within walking distance to at least a couple of the parks, getting to the hotel (more like serviced apartments) quite late.

Day 1 – SeaWorld

The hotel was at the back of SeaWorld, so I just walked around in the morning, taking a look at Manta and arriving a bit before opening.


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I’d bought a 3-park ticket and completed their somewhat faffy facial recognition thing online, so got in quickly. It wasn’t too busy at that point, and despite the cred anxiety, I figured that it would be best to head to the big tank first while it was quiet.


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Yeah, it’s amazing. In terms of what’s in it, there’s not really anything I haven’t seen before – most big aquaria have pretty much the same species – but there was a lot and the presentation was excellent, especially the multiple viewing areas across different levels. The biggest tank is now at Chimelong Spaceship, but it’s literally just a huge featureless pool for orcas, so this one is far more impressive.


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Cred time, starting with the family thing in the only proper rides area. The area’s cute, but it’s just kiddy rides. The coaster was walk-on and was decent enough. What you see is what you get basically.


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Manta was surprisingly difficult to find since the entrance is on a lower level. The first time, I ended up taking an unnecessarily long route around/through the dolphin area, but figured out the short cuts later.


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It was pretty much walk-on for the whole day, with no more than a 1 train wait or so apart from hitting a school trip group at one point. Operations were piss-poor though; I’d hate to see it on a busy day. Anyway, the coaster is excellent. I don’t think I’d really followed the construction of this, so assumed it was more “family” than it is until I saw it on the walk to the park. The layout is really well-paced, the inversions are excellent, the launches are punchy and there’s lots of airtime. This doesn’t get the love it deserves, and I’m just going to say it: it’s currently the best coaster in the UAE.


After a few rides, I headed back up to the dolphin area (didn’t bother with any shows) and a walkthrough aviary, which are both very well presented.


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The penguin area was also really impressive, probably the best I’ve seen. Most seem to have fairly shallow pools, but this one was ridiculously deep. Maybe it’s a bit too showy? Do penguins dive that deep when they’re getting fed at the surface? The walrus pools didn’t seem to have quite the same level of attention, but maybe that’s comparing it unfairly against other areas of this park rather than enclosures at other places; it was probably better than most I’ve seen.


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There are also seals, sealions, sea otters, all presented really well with above and underwater viewing areas.


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I was popping back and to for Manta rerides, and also headed back into the huge tank area (can’t remember or be arsed to check the name of it), but that was getting a lot busier in the afternoon, with some long queues of people all taking the same picture, and wasn’t as pleasant to spend time in, so I’d definitely recommend hitting that area up at park opening. I also caught some show in the main hub. It was very cool, but also very long and, ultimately, is just looking at screens.


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And that was it really. I was very impressed with this place. As an aquarium, it’s up there with the very best I’ve seen, and craps all over the US parks (at least in terms of animal exhibits/theming), but this is very much an aquarium with a handful of rides whereas the US parks are going in the other direction. Manta is excellent, and from what I can tell, I think there’s more outside space available. There's another big ride here, a jacked-up simulator thing which looks very impressive, but was closed. This place is one of the best overall park experiences in the area, but another major ride could push this into possibly being the best.


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It wasn’t too late when I got out, so I headed out for an “if there’s time” +1. Somehow, there’s always time…


Orange Hub

This was one of the ubiquitous shopping mall parks. There’s one cred listed on RCDB, but two more is-it-a-creds on Coaster-Count. I was happy to learn that on the day I was there (Tuesday?), there was an offer where all rides were only about a quid each. Excellent! Still got to get a card with 20 quid’s worth of credit though. Bollocks.


The proper coaster was an SPF Visa thing. Ugh. It was the first one I’d seen with the hamster wheel though, so that had to be ticked off.


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It wasn’t quite as awful as I’d been expecting, but there’s no need to ever do it again. Obviously, I’ll get the creds, but I’ll choose the regular car. One of the is-it-a-creds was a zipline coaster (I’ve done one before and counted it), but powered/controlled by the rider. Hmmmmmmm.


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Nah, I’ve ticked it off on Coaster-Count, but not included it in my personal count. The non-powered one I'd done felt coastery, this didn't. The other is-it-a-cred was part of a funhouse thing, which was the only semi-busy attraction in the whole place. No, just absolutely not. I didn’t even bother with it just to tick off the Coaster-Count box. It’s a pole on a piece of track (like those ski lift things). It’s a piece of playground equipment. If you’ve ridden this and count it, don’t be so f**king ridiculous.


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The staff here were super nice, and trying to get me to ride other stuff that I really didn’t want to. I ended up trying out one of these newer rotor-style rides. I’d seen loads of them in Turkey, but hadn’t tried one before. I’m pretty sure they’re made by SBF Visa as well. Yeah, one and done; not for me anymore.


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I used up some of the card credit on a few games and headed out, got food in the mall, and got a Careem (like Uber) back to the hotel.
 
The next day followed a similar pattern: a walk from the hotel to Ferrari World around the outside of Formula Rossa. This was a revisit, but since last time, Missions Ferrari had opened. Plus, some rerides on Formula Rossa and Flying Aces wouldn’t go amiss.

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I was there about half an hour before opening, and there was already quite a big queue forming, which got a lot bigger as I was waiting, I bought a fast pass and quickly collected that after getting into the park. Good decision. I headed straight to Rossa and pretty much walked straight on using the fast pass, though the regular line would’ve only taken around 15 minutes at that point. Did you know there’s a viewing platform? Nobody’s ever taken these pictures before (could’ve just used the old ones and not wasted time…).

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I felt exactly the same way about this as I did on the first visit. It’s a very good coaster, but it doesn’t do much other than speed, which is fine since that’s the point of it. The launch is great though. It’s also holding up well as far as I can remember from last time. I did a reride (this time waiting around 15 minutes - main queue up to 45 already) and moved on to this thing:

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Just as pointless as I remember it. Needs scrapping and replacing with a massive drop tower through that roof hole, assuming they could fit one.

I needed this cred, but it was closed. Annoying.

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The lovely ornament from my last visit was showing no signs of life, but signs out front had it opening slightly later. Flying Aces in the meantime then, again using the fast pass for a walk-on for what was a 30-minute queue.

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Yep, still the best thing at this park and the only coaster in the UAE that, for me, could really be argued to be the best other than Manta. Manta takes it, just, but I could fully understand someone preferring this. Those, however, are the only two correct answers.

The former ornament was testing, and was 10-minutes away from opening, so I hovered at the ride entrance and made the first car of the day.

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Yeah. Ok then. It wasn’t the unmitigated disaster I was expecting. The dark ride sections were mostly done a bit better than expected given how piss-poor the dark rides here are, and the coaster had its moments. Well, moment. I quite enjoyed the opening launch and inversion. The backwards section was not enjoyable. The fannying around on a motionbase/tilt track/whatever-that-was was dull. I’m not sure if the screens were f**ked, but nothing happened for ages (literally nothing) and then a helicopter came up at the end. That final sideways slide was a s**t way to end the ride as well. That’s one of the main problems I think. It starts off well, then it’s a case of increasingly diminishing returns.

This was only running one side. There was literally nobody there though, which was strange since the park was actually getting very busy. I’ve got both sides anyway, so I probably wouldn’t have done both again. Meh. I’d quite liked it last time, but this time found the laterals quite uncomfortable.

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Back to Rossa. By this point, the fast-pass line was at 45 minutes and the regular was 170. And they were running one train. Utter madness. There was also a massive queue at the fast pass booth by this stage (apparently, they sold out soon after). I waited out the 45 minutes (up to an hour soon after), but was glad I’d at least done one reride earlier since I wasn’t going to be doing it again.

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I couldn’t remember much/anything about the dark rides (and I think I’d missed a couple last time), so did a circuit of the park getting those done. A couple of them are ok (Speed of Magic? Benno’s Race?), but the others are absolutely diabolical. Absolute dog s**t attractions. The flying theatre had over an hour wait in the regular queue thanks to them only using about a third of the seats, and it’s total s**t. I’m offended by how bad it is. I’d missed Driving with Champion last time, which turned out to be an incredibly old-fashioned simulator ride. This also had a long queue, had over half the seat closed off, and was total s**t. That Marinello thing was also, you guessed it, total s**t, but at least had the good manners to not have any queue.

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I redid Flying Aces – the 15-minute fast pass queue being managed very poorly and actually taking 45 (single train all day for this as well), and called it a day since it was only that and Rossa that I wanted to reride, but I wasn’t going to wait in those lines. The park had an early close for Ramadan anyway, so I just got food in YAAAAAAAAAAAS mall and walked back the same way I’d come.

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Yeah, f**k this place, honestly. They’ve got two excellent coasters, one interesting (not great) experience with Mission Ferrari, and a whole slew of s**te. Operations are abysmal and their dark rides are so embarrassingly bad in the first place without the added insult of overly-long queue times thanks to most of the seats being blocked off. Whether that’s an operational or maintenance thing I don’t know.

I hope they never build anything major again so that I won’t ever have to go back.
 
I’m just going to say it: it’s currently the best coaster in the UAE.
I was surprised to hear this, thinking of both Formula Rossa and Flying Aces. But then I wasn't fortunate enough to try Manta whilst living out there (they had basically only started construction whilst I was living out there). I can see how perhaps a more 'dynamic' coaster could pip those two. I loved both of the "big boys" at Ferrari World, but I don't find it hard to believe that Manta would actually deliver more overall.

Agree the dark rides at FW were mediocre even back in 2016, so not surprised they were no better nowadays.

As ever, great report and hopefully I can hear a SFQ report from you before too long. Just need Mr. Trump to get his **** together....
 
^ I'm sure loads of people will disagree with me as to it being the best, but I thought Manta was the most well-rounded coaster and the more satisfying ride. I've got the same Doha/Riyadh plan on the backburner, hopefully ready to go for Chinese New Year next year.

I know everyone must’ve been checking for daily updates to this report on parks that no enthusiasts have ever been to before, so apologies for seemingly abandoning it, but I took an Easter trip in the meantime. Before I start sharing pictures of Chinese jungle mouse coasters though, I’ll get this one finished.

Warner Brothers was another new park since my last visit. My hotel which wasn’t a hotel didn’t have anywhere to store luggage (seriously?), so I took it with me with the assumption that there’d be a place to leave it. There was, and that was sorted pretty quicky.

Before the official park opening time, you get let into the central hub, which has a kind of pre-park opening show of various WB films. It’s really impressive – the general area I mean rather than the show.

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This is where I made my first mistake. The cred whore in me told me to head straight for the coasters, but I ignored this incredibly correct instinct and headed into the Gotham area first, recognising the name of the Batman dark ride and kind of remembering that it was excellent and very popular. The whole area is gorgeous, one of the best indoor areas I’ve ever seen. The ride (a Forbidden Journey affair) was also very good, but loading and unloading seemed unnecessarily faffy. I was right at the front of the queue when it opened and got straight on, so it wasn’t an issue.

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The disc’o “coaster” was down, which was a bit disappointing since it looked really impressive. I’ve done a bunch of them and don’t count them as creds, so it wasn’t too big of a deal. There was no queue for Joker’s Fun House, but I’d obviously just missed a batch of people, so ended up waiting for about ten minutes to be let in. It was fine, but faffy at the end to wait in another queue to use the slide since people are generally muppets and couldn’t fathom how to put their feet in a sack.

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I should’ve headed for creds but just continued around to the Metropolis area since it was quiet and I wasn’t getting a huge sense of urgency. I did the flying theatre (Green Lantern?) which was excellent considering I’m sick to death of the ride type, and the Justice League 4D dark ride thing, which was very good apart from sightlines being a bit s**t in a back-row, far-side seat with those ridiculously high sides on the vehicles. The Superman thing was closed. From what I can make out, it’s kind of similar to the 360 thing at Sea World, that was two for two that were down.

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I know it doesn’t happen often, but are you ready for me to moan about something? While those first three rides had all been really high quality, they were all extremely similar in their content. The “help the superhero” trope is a well-used one by now, and there’s nothing implicitly wrong with it, but you’ve got three of them - well, four, since I’m guessing Superman does the same thing – within a 30-second walk of each other. It’s the same thing multiple times but repeated across different ride systems, and it’s really f**king boring.

The first queue of the day was at the cartoon shooter thingy. I’m not sure if it was because the more family-friendly areas were more popular generally, or because of increasing crowds as the day went on. Maybe people were starting in those areas and moving round the opposite way to how I was doing it. In which case, I’d been right to hit those dark rides first. Anyway, from what I remember the ride was decent enough for what it was.

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And then I finally hit the coasters, which both had queues of close to an hour. Ugh. I bypassed Tom and Jerry at first to check out the waiting time for the other coaster, but they were both about the same. To be fair, I hadn’t waited for more than around 15 minutes for anything at this point, so I just sucked it up. The suspended thing was decent. I couldn’t place what felt different about it until I realised later that it’s an Intamin and not a Vekoma.

The Tom and Jerry spinner thing was much better than I expected. I thought I was waiting an hour just to tick the cred box, but I actually enjoyed it.

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Scooby Doo had been closed as I’d passed on the way to the suspended coaster, but after riding the spinner, it had reopened and had a minimal queue. I really liked this. It’s a decent trackless ride system whereby different vehicles see different things in each room and it follows the style of the old cartoon really well.

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I finished up with a ride on the Flintstone’s log flume, which was cute and had no queue at all. Maybe my earlier guess that people started at this end and worked around to Metropolis and Gotham was accurate and I’d met the biggest crowds in the middle at the coasters. I never went back into those earlier areas to check.

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I liked this place. For an indoor theme park, it’s easily up there with the very best, but for coaster enthusiasts, it’s obviously lacking a massive draw. It’s slightly inconsistent with the quality of the theming as well. Metropolis and Gotham City were vey well done, but the Flintstones area felt a little bland. Staff were a mixed bag, too. The women outside the park at guest services, who sorted the luggage storage, were really nice, friendly and chatty, whereas a lot of the ride ops were surly almost to the point of rudeness. I don’t generally care about stuff like that - just do the job efficiently and get me on the ride – so for me to even notice it probably says something.

I had to get to Dubai next, but the free YAAAAAAAAAAS express bus wasn’t leaving for a few hours. An Uber was going to be very pricey to go the whole way, and the Abu Dhabi Bus Station is also nowhere near, also requiring a fairly lengthy taxi ride, in the wrong direction, to start with. Because I’m a total genius though, I figured that Abu Dhabi Airport – a ten-minute drive away – would have some sort of express bus to Dubai, and indeed it did. I was on one of those within about 20 minutes of leaving the park.

Dubai stuff next then.
 
Dubai then.

Without really thinking things through properly, I stayed at a hotel near the Dubai Mall / Burj Khalifa since I’d stayed at my friend’s place in that area before and it was all quite familiar, but it ended up just adding faff this time. The bus from Abu Dhabi drops off at Ibn Battuta Station, which has a direct metro link to where I was staying – great - but it’s not particularly close and was uncomfortably crowded. I should’ve got a taxi, but it wouldn’t have made a huge difference timewise and would’ve been pretty pricey despite being infinitely more comfortable. I’m sure Uber/Careem was considerably cheaper last time.

I headed over to Dubai Mall, which despite being “close” was still a twenty-minute walk, luckily through air-conditioned walkways, to get food and knock off the coaster I hadn’t done before. It was grossly busy around the Burj viewing point – last time I’d sat outside at a restaurant there and it was quiet – so I quickly sacked that off and just got food in the food court. Maybe the fountains were about to do something. Dunno and don’t care.

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On the next morning, the bus out to the parks (Motiongate, Legoland etc.) also went from Ibn Battuta, so it was a trek back to exactly where I’d arrived the evening before. Ugh. I didn’t need to revisit Legoland , thank f**k, but there was new stuff at Motiongate and BollyMadrid since my last visit. They’ve added extra tat around the general area, which was drawing in precisely zero crowds.

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The bus arrives considerably earlier than the parks open – probably for staff to use it to get to work – so there was a bit of hanging around. It was predictably dead. Real Madrid World had a later closing time, so I opted to start with Motiongate, giving myself a time buffer that I knew I wouldn’t really need.

There were two new coasters since I was last here, and I liked the park anyway so didn’t mind a revisit, but one of those was closed. Anyway, I headed straight to the new cred to make sure I could beat the nonexistent crowds and got a solo ride on the first car of the day.

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The area and queue line were well done – I’m guessing it looks better at night – and the coaster was very good for the ride type, with a pretty big drop. Overall, a decent enough addition.

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The closed coaster – John Wick – was testing, but never opened. I asked later at guest services and they gave the predictably vague, non-committal answer which suggested it was probably f**ked. No big loss since it would’ve only been a +1; I don’t like these much at all.

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Hunger Games stuff then. I stand by Capital Bullet Train being a decent coaster which gets unnecessary negativity. No, it’s nothing special, but it’s a fun ride and has a couple of stand-out moments like the hangtime in the loop and some airtime pops. I’d forgotten about the ride system for Aerial Tour – remembering it as a flying theatre – so I almost skipped it. It’s not the best ride, but the park was dead and it’s something different to the usual flying theatre things at least.

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Onto the indoor bit, which is really the highlight of the park. Madagascar is still the best coaster here, and I love how shocked people are by it since you see almost nothing of the ride beforehand, and there’s nothing to indicate the launch or how intense it is for a family ride. It’s a prime example of the IP not matching the ride at all, but I like that.

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Dragon Gliders was “temporarily closed’ which I didn’t take to be a good sign, but after hanging around to take a few pictures – which will be identical to those taken last time – they sent a train round, so I just waited for a few more minutes and, yep, they got it open. It’s an excellent attraction. My favourite part last time had been when it flies out of the ride building across the park section, and that was still the case, but I’d forgotten about most of what was inside, which was quite impressive in places, way better than the similar ride at Universal Beijing at any rate.

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The Kung Fu Panda area looks great, but has the weakest main attraction of the 4 indoor lands with its simulator ride. It’s fine for what it is, but I’d never wait to ride it.

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I was kind of worried about the Shrek ride since I’d absolutely loved it last time, but nobody seems to give it any attention at all, and I thought maybe I’d got it “wrong” and was remembering it as being better than it actually is. Nope, it’s fantastic. I just think the whole premise of the Shrek story being told through a puppet show, which the ride travels through, is so clever. Also, rather than just presenting random scenes that don’t make sense unless you’re familiar with the source material – as so many of these rides do – it presents the whole story really coherently. Excellent ride which deserves way more love than it gets and is the best dark ride in the park by a mile.

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That just left the other outside areas, which had nothing new since my last visit. I didn’t bother with the Smurf coaster, but redid the dark ride since I could remember nothing about it, and redid Green Hornet since it’s decent enough. Obviously, everything was walk-on anyway, so it’s not like I had to worry about waiting for anything. I skipped the rapids. Underworld looked partly abandoned, but was actually scheduled to open in the late afternoon. I think I’d quite liked this last time, but not enough to hang around for 2-3 hours. I did Ghostbusters – probably the most disappointing dark ride here given what it could be – and Hotel Transylvania, which is fine. This is the ride which a lot of people seem quite enamoured with, and the interaction with the other cars is quite cool, but it’s ultimately quite boring.

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I’d liked this place a lot on my first visit, and it still held up. Apart from the couple of new coasters, everything felt the same, and I mean that in a positive way since it had been quite a long time since my last visit, meaning that everything has been well maintained and money is clearly being spent. It’s easily, for me, the best park in Dubai, and in terms of a decent balance between coasters and dark rides, arguably the best in the UAE. Obviously, Ferrari World has a couple of better coasters, but their dark rides are shockingly bad and it’s not a particularly pleasant park. Sea World is stunning, but is really an aquarium with a couple of rides, and Warner Bros. has the dark rides, but not the coasters. Yeah, I’ve just talked myself into it; in terms of having the strongest overall ride line-up, Motiongate is the best park in the UAE. Fight me.

Then, I went to Real Madrid World. Wow.

I had been here before when it was Bollywood Park, and it was crap in terms of rides, but was pleasant enough to spend time in. They’ve taken what was already crap and ens**tified it to the max. There are creds now though. The guy on the gate mentioned a coaster being down – great – but I didn’t recognise the name, so figured that it was just the kiddy coaster, so not too much of a big deal. Luckily, it turned out to be the disc’o.

I got the kiddy coaster out of the way and headed to Hala Madrid, the woodie. There was literally just me and one other guy, an American enthusiast who was doing some park vlog, so chatted to him a bit as we got some front and back row rides in. Nice kid to be fair. The coaster itself was disappointing though. It promised a lot, but just didn’t do very much at all.

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I didn’t do the star flyer. Sure, it’s one of the tallest, but I don’t really like them and an arbitrary few extra feet doesn’t really change the ride experience.

I can’t dig out old pictures at the moment, but I’m sure this used to be right in the middle of the park, Well, at the back of the park, but in the middle if that makes sense:

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Now, it’s outside the park with the entry gates to the left, so it seems that they’ve actually only taken half of the old park and converted it, leaving the other half undeveloped. They also covered up what was decent theming with cheap layovers and taken dark rides which were already terrible, terrible versions of rides at Motiongate (similar ride systems to Kung Fu Panda and Aerial Flight, but executed so incredibly poorly) and somehow made them even worse, which I guess is actually quite an achievement.

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So yeah, it’s an absolute embarrassment of a park. They’ve cut the size of the park considerably and made it feel cheap. The woodie, which falls very much in the middle to lower end of GCI coasters, is the only thing worth doing. The dark rides are some of the worst I’ve ridden anywhere and make the crap at Ferrari World look good, and they have the outright audacity to charge the same price as Legoland and Motiongate. How can you put this next to Motiongate and expect anyone to not notice how s**t it is? It actually made me angry. How has this been done so spectacularly badly?

I got the bus back to Ibn Battuta and then got the metro and Uber to Dubai Hills Mall for Storm Coaster, an Intamin vertical launch thing. In another example of Dubai’s unrealistic expectations, they’ve built a rather large queue area which will never need to be used and had about 8 people working it. I was the only rider, but wasn’t allowed to take the front seat since that’s, obviously, an upcharge even when there’s not a single other person there.

Sorry, remembering Real Madrid World is causing second-hand anger; I actually liked this coaster. As an investment for the mall, it’s pure stupidity and will only ever lose money, but it’s a fun, unique ride with some very weird-feeling elements. In the taxi on the way out, I saw the whole glass construction it’s been housed in. It’s all quite impressive.

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That’s the parks done. I had no need to revisit IMG or Global Village, and any missing mall coasters were too much of a PITA to bother with, so I had a couple of days of touristy stuff and catching up with a friend. I may or may not do a photo dump of that later - the touristy stuff, not the friend – in the interest of completeness.
 
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I agree with Manta being UAE's best coaster (with the rather large caveat that I didn't get to do Formula Rossa). Very much the most complete coaster which knows what it's doing - just a bit of a shame that the ride area feels a bit barren. They obviously had an idea with theming and style and it's half way there, it just feels like it needs some ponds / waterfall going on around it.

I adored Warner Bros, but it does need an actual worthwhile coaster to round off the park. Doesn't even have to be a big thrill ride, just a well-rounded family coaster. I guess there's no signs of anything on the Harry Potter Land front?

I'm still disappointed over 2 years later that I got rained out of Motiongate...it looks like such a fun park to do properly.
 
The Superman thing was closed. From what I can make out, it’s kind of similar to the 360 thing at Sea World, that was two for two that were down.
In case this is still giving you sleepless nights, Superman isn't even a ride. Just standing in a room watching a screen.

Really wanna try that Intamin in a mall before it inevitably gives up the ghost, but it's about the only draw for me to go back right now and, well...

Also yes, Shrek ride is legendary.
 
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